We thought we’d pay light homage to the failed assassination attempt with a few choice examples of the weirdest, most mysterious, elaborate and creative means used to dispatch enemies over the years.
Guy Fawkes
The Gunpowder Plot led, not by Fawkes but by Robert Catesby, a devout catholic with a prestigious lineage who wished to displace the protestant king and restore catholic rule shortly after the Union of Scotland, England and Ireland.Guido ‘Guy’ Fawkes was put in charge of executing the plan due to his military and armaments background. A huge explosion was planned to kill King James I of England, his family, and most of the aristocracy, by blowing up the House of Lords in the Palace of Westminster during the State Opening of Parliament.
But an anonymous letter warned the authorities a plot was afoot and a search of the cavities underneath the parliament in the early hours of 5 November 1605.
Fawkes was arrested a few hours before the planned explosion, when officials searched the cellars underneath parliament in the early hours of 5 November prompted by the receipt of an anonymous warning letter.
Fawkes and co had rented a cellar under the building after a tunnelling attempt proved unsuccessful. By March 1605, they had hidden 1,800 pounds (36 barrels, or 800 kg) of gunpowder in the cellar.
Fawkes gave an alias and was tortured until he gave up the names of his conspirators. He was hanged in early 1606. Robert Catesby was killed by a force of investigating lawmen soon after.
Interestingly, the term “guy” to mean man is derived from Fawkes.
Jodie Foster made me do it
Ronald Reaan’s assassination attempt in 1981 hangs in American cultural infamy. Just 69 days into his premiership, he left a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C.The shooter was one John Hinckley Jr who shot and wounded the then President and three of his entourage.
Reagan quickly recovered despite the shot puncturing his lung. He was the first President to survive a gunshot attempt on their life. but the incident is more romantised because of Hinckley’s unusual motive.
The motivation behind Hinckley’s attack was an obsession with Taxi Driver and its actress Jodie Foster.
The phenomenon known as erotomania is defined as “A delusional, romantic preoccupation with a stranger, often a public figure”.
A Hollywood resident of the late 1970s, Hinckley saw himself as Travis Bickle, the lead from De Niro’s classic film Taxi Driver.
In the film, Bickle attempts to protect a 12 year old prostitute played by Jodie Foster and even tries to assassinate a US Senator running for the top job.
Hinckley trailed Foster around the country in the years after Taxi Driver and enrolled in her university only to find his romantic intent was not matched.
Convinced that by becoming a national figure he would be Foster’s equal, Hinckley began to stalk then-President Jimmy Carter before Reagan’s appointment in late 1980.
He was sectioned after the incident.
The Exploding Cuban
In the first of two entries on the list, the CIA were forever coming up with new, ingenious and downright daft ways to do away with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.Under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy in the late 50s and 60s, the CIA dreamed up whacky plots to kill their Cold War neighbour, the most famous of which involved capitalising on the big man’s love for cigars.
Dubbed “Operation Mongoose, both administrations were obsessed for a time with ridding their ‘free world’ of the communist dictator so opted to slip a potent, lethal and high impact explosive cigar into his batch of Cubans.
The plot has been dismissed as myth and reinstated as fact as CIA whistleblowers give their account. Suffice to say it didn’t work and the Cuban leader is still, allegedly, alive – but we haven’t seen him for a bit have we?
According to legend, the exploding cigar trick has been used as a plaything and instrument of pain for over a century.
Apparently U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant gave a Mr. Horace Norton, the founder of a defunct college in Chicago, an exploding cigar soon after being introduced to him and Ernest Hemmingway presented an exploding cigar to the bodyguard of a Turkish general which exploded, not endangering the life of the bodyguard.
Killing Castro 101
Fidel was a fortunate bugger during that time as a list of alleged plots includes some rather diverse methods of dispatch. Let's have a look.Exploding seashells to be planted at a scuba diving site.
A gift diving wetsuit impregnated with noxious bacteria and mold spores or lethal chemical agents.
Infecting Castro’s scuba regulator apparatus with tuberculous bacilli.
Dousing his handkerchiefs, his tea, and his coffee with other lethal bacteria.
Having a former lover to slip him poison pills.
Exposing him to various other poisoned items such as a fountain pen and even ice cream.
American authorities admitted in the mid 1970’s that at least eight separate CIA attempts were made on Castro yet Fabian Escalante, his bodyguard throughout the period, contends that there have been 638 goes.
Angel Overboard
In a plot that was suggested in the 80s and all-but-confirmed in a 2008 documentary, Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones supposedly escaped an assassination plot by the Hell's Angels.The Angels were apparently fuming when Jagger accused them for playing a part in the murder of a fan at a free rock concert at the Altamont Speedway in California where they were hired as security.
In return, gang members hatched a plan to kill Jagger at his holiday home in Long Island, New York, by sailing a boat towards the coastal residence and killing the rock god.
But in a fairly comedic revelation the boat was hit by a storm and all of the men were thrown overboard and had to be rescued.
The Hells Angels have always denied their part in the Altamont murder and Jagger has never confirmed nor denied he was aware of the attempt on his life.
Dying for a Fag
The KGB, not unlike the CIA, was known for their creative ways of dispatching enemies, political dissenters and foes of the regime. They became more widely known for plots involving poison and chemicals rather than explosives.Deadly chemical Ricin, which is easily garnered from the casing of castor beans, has the potential to be a large scale killer yet the KGB used it on the tips of umbrellas to infect and quickly kill their enemies.
The umbrella tip would have an attachment no larger than the stem of a pin which would prick through the targets clothing and inject a lethal dose of the poison before the subject has time to notice.
But the poison umbrella, genius though it might have been in a perverse kind of way, was the precursor to the deadly cigarette case designed with Soviet exile and western defector Georgi Sergeyevich Oklovich in mind.
Oklovich was to be felled by a cigarette case which, upon opening would trigger a flurry of poison filled hollow-point bullets that would shoot through the false cigarettes inside.
Oklovich was not killed in this way as the KGB agent sent to do the deed himself defected to the west.
God and Gadaffi
This asassination attempt is not weird for its method but the tale surrounding it and the manner of man who broke the story.Britain is no stranger to our own assassination plots and over time they have involved bombs and clandestine devices to pick off our enemies of the state: prominent IRA members and our political enemies abroad where interests lie.
But the plot to kill Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi was shrouded in a dark tarpaulin of espionage, secret deals and meetings like a James Bond blockbuster.
In 1996 it is alleged by Westminster underlings that the government sanctioned a plot to bomb the motorcade of the Colonel. The attack took place and although Gaddafi escaped, it did claim the lives of several of his bodyguards.
However, an intelligence report disclosed that British intelligence knew in advance that there would be an attempt to blow up Gaddafi.
The report, coded CX95/53452, detailed when and where the assassination attempt was due to take place and said that 250 British-made weapons were distributed among the plotters.
The reason claims of British involvement were uttered was down to an ex MI5 officer called David Shayler who famously appeared from his exiled flat in Paris to take part in BBC’s Have I Got News For You.
Shayler alleged MI6 paid about £100,000 to help purchase jeeps and weapons, and claims he was offered several million by the Libyans to reveal details of the plot.
By this time the British authorities had an arrest warrant for Shayler for breaking the Official Secrets Act and he was exiled in Europe.
Even more bizarrely, Shayler had been editor of the university newspaper in Dundee and joined MI5 after answering a secretly coded job listing. He now thinks he is the messiah, thinks 7/7 was a government-led conspiracy and was reportedly living in a squat in London.
Odd.
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